A blog for full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, support staff, and friends of Ocean County College who are concerned about the current negative campus climate.
Comments may be posted anonymously by leaving the email address field blank, but please avoid posting anything libelous.

Kiss My Ass, JL.

Let's get this straight. Faculty are solicited for input into initiatives that consist of more work for faculty with no additional pay. The FACULTY ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT is one of the leaders of these initiatives. You have got to be kidding me.

Accept "honors" students into my class at additional work for me with no compensation.

Build new degree programs without compensation.

Attend professional development offerings on my own time.

Faculty, please, stand up and say "NO!" to additional workload with no pay. Work to the existing contract until a fair, new contract is signed. The Faculty Association President should be shouting these sentiments at the top of her lungs instead of getting into bed with the new VPAA.

Let the new VPAA re-invent the wheel on her own time with her own bloated salary. She is, no doubt, using us as a stepping-stone to a college presidency. I am tired of being stepped on and used.

Comments

As noted on an earlier post,trouble in paradise continues as allegiances between zahler and friends and admnistration shift 360 degrees.Guess friendships with Larson and co along with the perks only depended on the bellowing knee crooking union sycophants getting what they want. As someone commented, don't come to the FAOCC Zahler, looking for support & sympathy from us pigs.How does it feel to have no power anymore? You know what they say: What goes around. Maybe it's time to retire. But you're so full of yourself you probably still believe you control everyone and everything at OCC an "adjunct school." Anyone interested in a laugh can read the sorry new edition of the adjunct newsletter on their website.

The college has suffered heavy turnover among managers. The report said 39 of a group of 55 top administrators from 2007 were no longer in their positions by 2013. Employees told the team that “cronyism” and the manipulation of employment policies to reward or punish employees contributed to the turnover. And the report also criticized the college’s awarding of contracts without considering other bids.

“The former chancellor and the board appear to have established a symbiotic relationship which prevented the board from acting independently and from taking appropriate steps to safeguard the well-being of many of the college’s employees,” according to the site team. “The team believes that some of the college’s senior leadership, both past and present, have misused and abused the power of their positions.”

Interesting article about an Arizona community college that has accreditation issues, in part, because "An unhealthy college culture was established through the use of intimidation, fear and an abuse of executive power." Sound familiar?

To add to your wonderful pithy reptilian summary, Be-Bop, this public name calling rant for all to see speaks volumes about true nature of the Adjunct Prez whose friendship and public support and gifts last only as long as he gets what he wants. The tide has turned. Let's see if JL and Co will continue to associate and pacify this user, this lowlife piece of garbage, ever again.

An adjunct showed me a scathing but poorly written article in the adjunct association newsletter written by none other then Michael Zahler about the status of adjunct contract negotiations. He blasted Larson and called him a liar with no class among other things. Trouble in Paradise? What goes around....Stay tuned, folks.

ANyone know if the "invitation"from Dr. Wang to attend the April all school meeting is mandatory or voluntary? I personally am not interested in another BS cheerleading session with empty promises and directives to participate in initiatives without compensation.

Despite all his prevailing big-blow bombast about change, delivered in an assemblage of quotes better suited to the rhetorical form of a shopping list, Larson can not conceal the truth that his conduct models a managerial neanderthal.

From an article in today's NYTimes on the success of Google's workplace environment and the connections between a content worker and an unhappy one.

"Ben Waber, who has a Ph.D. from M.I.T. and is the author of 'People Analytics,' is, at 29, the median age of Google employees. His company, Sociometric Solutions in Boston, uses data to assess workplace interactions." He argues that people need to be work in a supportive workplace and workspace because "if you’re stressed, there’s someone to help, to take up the slack. If you’re surrounded by friends, you’re happier, you’re more loyal, you’re more productive. Google looks at this holistically. It’s the antithesis of the old factory model, where people were just cogs in a machine."

On Yahoo's recent plan to make everyone work at the office, he writes “If you’re spying on them, monitoring them or coercing them, it will create a poisonous atmosphere,” Dr. Waber said.

Did the Empress actually tell the applicants their projects would not "generate revenue"? If that were me, I'd be at the BoTrustees meeting demanding an explanation and definition.What about sabbatical precedents at OCC?

Bebop: And we have this from St. Olaf. Perhaps the new VPAA needs an education.

"The sabbatical leave has grown out of a recognition of the need and desirability for each faculty member to have an opportunity at regular intervals for professional growth and renewal. The purpose of the sabbatical leave program is to strengthen the faculty by providing opportunity for tenured faculty members to improve their competence as creative and interpretive teachers. (...)
Each faculty member's sabbatical should be designed primarily to engage the individual with some aspect of current scholarship or professional activity. It should not be used simply to prepare course material..."

Self-promoting? That's putting it mildly, BSB. Latest news out of admin is that the Empress/Dragon Lady is pursuing and, of course, taking full credit for a potential degree program in hospitality and tourism. Does she know about Sandy? Devastation to the Shore? Atlantic City? She thinks that this is a great career opportunity? The woman needs to get off the caffeine and get over herself. She's pissing off a lot of people at all levels.

We have heard that the declined sabbatical leave applications lacked a demonstrated purpose of generating revenue for the college. Next to the stultifying pecuniary grubbing vision of Dr. Wang, consider one familiar definition of sabbatical leave:

"Sabbatical leave is defined as a prolonged absence from work in the career of an academic employee granted for the purposes of approved scholarly or creative activity for professional development or research purposes. It provides a means for academic employees to increase their knowledge, further their research, stimulate intellectual interests and strengthen networks with the global community of scholars, thus enhancing their contribution to the University on their return."

It appears on the website of the University of KwaZula-Natal, South Africa.

The contrast portends that we are witnessing some sordid damning decline in human civilization.

A colluding Ritacco business crony and an admitted fraud, Pravin Patel was favored for decades with Toms River public contracts. Nonetheless, Patel "pleaded guilty to one [sic] count of filing a false corporate tax return."

Let's hope prosecutors graced Patel with this munificent mercy less for his character virtues than for his exacting memory and loose loyalties.